


lingering still.

by katarama



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, Future Fic, Guilt, High School, Makeup, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7545256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows he probably wouldn’t even need to explain himself to her.  Malia gets him, in a way that’s different from how Scott gets him, but that’s just as true.  Maybe that was what scared him in the first place, the idea that Malia was so sure of him, so steady, when even Stiles was scared of what he’d become.</p>
<p>Even now, Stiles feels unsteady and ashamed.  So he sits on it, waiting for things to feel right.  Waiting to feel ready.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lingering still.

It’s weird to Stiles how much looking back over the things that have happened to him in past few years feels like looking back at someone else’s life.  There was what happened with the nogitsune, that whole period of time when Stiles was in his head but not behind the wheel.  There was the constant running for his life, the constant fear of creatures that lurk in the dark, or that lose control in the light of the full moon.  There was blood on his hands, sometimes his own, sometimes others’.  People he’d been going to school with since preschool lost their lives.

A lot of it Stiles copes with by putting it on someone else.  Or at least putting it off himself.  It’s easy to convince himself that he had little choice in most of what happened.  He chose _Scott_ , chose his friends, and the rest of what has happened was out of necessity.  He was Scott’s best bro, and he’d follow him to the end of the earth.  If it took him down the path of lacrosse-playing paralyzing reptiles and packs of adult, red-eyed, murderous werewolves, then Stiles can roll with it.  But Stiles didn’t cause it, and neither did Scott.

There are a few things that Stiles looks back and thinks, “I did that.”  Some are moments he’s proud of.  Putting his faith in himself and watching the line of mountain ash outside the club become solid, a perfect, closed circle he didn’t have the mountain ash to complete.  Talking Scott down in the parking lot of the motel Glen Capris, taking that one step closer and gripping the flare, taking it away from Stiles’ hands.  There are moments when he’s made a _difference_ , when he’s gone beyond his limited capacity.

There are moments he’s much less proud of.  Some of them didn’t matter, in the long run.  They are moments he’s embarrassed by and ashamed of and generally tries not to dwell on.  He’s really good at ignoring things.  Denial is becoming a strong point.

Other decisions have had more long-lasting results.  Killing Donovan wasn’t a bad decision in and of itself.  It was self-defense, and even Scott, after the fact, said he understood that it was different than killing in cold blood.  But the other decisions that happened in the fall out, in trying to hide that he was the one who killed Donovan, Stiles regrets more.  Hiding things from his friends.  Lying to Scott.

And then, there was what happened with Malia.

Malia got it.  Better than she should’ve, in fact.  She was ready to have Stiles’ back, ready to be there for him.  Stiles couldn’t handle it at the time.  Looking back, he can’t explain exactly what it was.  He doesn’t know whether it was the guilt eating him alive that Malia was ready to absolve him of, whether it was that he wasn’t ready yet to accept what had happened, when she was willing to take him as he was.  Malia had always been there for those moments, the moments when Stiles felt lost.  

Whatever it was, Stiles got scared.  Stiles got scared and pulled away, retreated into his head, and Malia respected him.  She let him have his space, let him work through things with Scott.  And she’s waited.  Not like Stiles, back when he was ‘waiting’ for Lydia, loud and demanding, pressing the issue to whoever would listen.  She’s been patient.  She’s been there to help when Stiles needed her, and more than once, Stiles has wanted to reach out and say something.  To bridge the gap, to bring her back.  To tell her he misses her.  To tell her he loves her.

He knows he probably wouldn’t even need to explain himself to her.  Malia gets him, in a way that’s different from how Scott gets him, but that’s just as true.  Maybe that was what scared him in the first place, the idea that Malia was so sure of him, so steady, when even Stiles was scared of what he’d become.

Even now, Stiles feels unsteady and ashamed.  So he sits on it, waiting for things to feel right.  Waiting to feel ready.

Waiting for the guilt to quit eating him up inside.

* * *

 

“Prom tickets go on sale soon,” Scott mentions.  It’s a subject they’ve all been avoiding.  Lydia hasn’t even brought up running for prom queen yet.  Stiles isn’t even sure she actually will, considering.  She hasn’t really dated anyone long-term since Jackson, and she’s grown a lot less concerned with bids for popularity since they split.  Stiles thinks that Scott would make an awesome prom king, and that he and Lydia should go together, but Stiles knows Scott’s had a lot of other things on his mind.

Like colleges, and alpha business.

And Kira.

They haven’t heard from her since she was taken away by the skinwalkers, and it sounds like they might not at all until she gets things under control, kitsune-wise.  But Stiles knows Scott’s been dodging the prom conversation because Scott probably had plans of his own, lurking in the back of his head.  Plans of buying Kira a corsage and dancing with her, kissing under the light of BHHS’ tacky old disco balls.

“Are you thinking of going?” Stiles asks, because if Scott isn’t, then Stiles is noping out.  He knows Malia wouldn’t go on her own, although Lydia might drag her along as a date, if worse comes to worse.  

“We probably should, right?” Scott asks.  “It’s supposed to be a big tradition thing.”

“Tuxes are expensive,” Stiles points out.  “Pretty much everything about prom is expensive.  And neither of us has dates.”

“Only because you haven’t asked Malia yet.  You know she’d go with you.”

It’s their new initiative, this whole trying to be more honest with each other thing.  Sometimes it’s weird, having to put things into words around Scott.  They never did before.  It was probably part of the problem.  Stiles knows every line and expression of Scott’s face, like a poem he’s read so many times it’s penned across his heart.  But he didn’t always know how to say things out loud.  It’s good that they’re doing it now.  It’s helped a lot.  In growing closer again, in airing out apologies that should’ve been said sooner.  In dealing with some of what they’ve been through.

Sometimes, though, in moments like this, it kinda sucks a lot.

“We could do a non-prom party at my place, my dad’ll probably be working all night,” Stiles suggests.

“If you’re really worried about it, we could go as a group,” Scott says.  “You can ask Malia if you want, but there will be no pressure, if you’re still too scared.”

Stiles huffs a sigh.  “Fine,” he says.  “I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks, dude.”  Scott reaches out his hand and squeezes Stiles’, and Stiles sighs.  

Scott presented it as a choice, but Stiles knows, deep down in his gut, that it really isn’t.  He doesn’t want to go to prom without Malia at his side.  He could nope out of prom entirely, and Lydia would judge him pretty hard, but Scott wouldn’t press him on it.

Stiles thinks about it, though, and he thinks maybe he kind of wants to.  Maybe he thinks it’s the right time.  The chance to go back to a relationship that made him really, really happy, before it’s too late.

It looks like he’s going to need to buck up and do this, after all.

* * *

 

Stiles knows that elaborately asking people to prom is a Thing.  He knows he should probably have enough creativity in his bones to do something clever, to make some sort of grand gesture.  The idea of it makes him a little bit sick, though, makes the anxiety thrum under his skin.  There’s always the possibility that he would make a big production of it and then have Malia say no.  That he waited too long, that she doesn’t want him back.

“Just tell her how you feel,” Melissa tells Stiles when he asks for advice.  “Woo her a little bit, sure, because a girl loves to be told how special and wonderful she is.  But tell her how you honestly feel about her.”

It sounds like pretty much exactly what he should have expected from Melissa, but it also doesn’t sound like terrible advice.  So Stiles invites Malia over to study for exams, gets some snacks and cleans up his room and makes sure his dad won’t be home.

“You smell terrible,” Malia says as she sits down on his bed next to him, her English notebook in hand.  “Anxiety,” she says, after a moment’s pause.  “Is everything okay?”

“You’ve gotten better at telling what it is,” Stiles says.

“You smell anxious a lot,” Malia responds.  “And… I’m not quite sure what to call the feeling.  It’s not quite sad.  You usually go to angry before sad.  But whatever it is, it’s been a lot lately.”

“Probably the smell of missing you,” Stiles says, almost impulsively.  

He had planned this out a lot better than this.  He’d planned to wait until after they got studying done, had planned to stop Malia and confess his feelings, the one he hadn’t even admitted to back when they were dating, before.  He was going to say the L word and everything.  He had made flashcards and everything.  

But Malia is sitting next to him, smelling strongly of the deodorant Lydia unceremoniously shoved at Malia the first week of school, staring at him with concern in her eyes, and Stiles decides to go off-script.

“I’ve been right here.”

“I haven’t,” Stiles says.  “I don’t know where I’ve been.  I mean, like, obviously physically I’ve been right here, because my dad would kill me if I missed any more school this late into the semester, but, like.  Emotionally.  Not so much.  And I’m ready for that to maybe not be a thing, anymore.  The emotionally not being here.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Malia says, and Stiles’ heart is hopeful.  “Scott said I just had to wait for you to stop being weird.”

“I’ve been weird my whole life, you don’t have any hope of that,” Stiles tells her.  “But I did need some time.  Someone was dead, and that was kind of on me, and that wasn’t so easy for me.  But I’m good, now.  Or at least, more good.  Good enough to realize that I maybe kinda need to get my head out of my ass a little bit.  And maybe stop hiding a little bit.  I was just worried that while I was doing that, you’d like.  Leave me, or something.  Move on.”

“I told you before,” Malia says calmly.  She reaches out her hand, gently looping Stiles’ long fingers with her own thinner, smaller ones.  “I would never leave you behind.”

Stiles is a hair’s breadth away from saying I love you, a hair’s breadth away from kissing Malia, sinking into the feel of her lips and the taste of her mouth until he can’t breathe.  It’s a quiet assurance, a hand holding his, some repeated words, but he feels everything crashing back down around him.  The way his heart beats fast for Malia.  The way she makes him feel safe, and special, and needed.

“Will you go to prom with me?” he blurts instead.  “As my girlfriend.  Not just as a friend.”

“As long as you don’t expect me to wear heels like Lydia’s,” Malia says, and Stiles laughs.  

They do get some studying done.  Stiles knows Malia can probably hear the way his heart is beating like it’s forgotten how, just from being this close to her.  Stiles knows Malia can probably smell the way his whole body feels warm and light and full, relief after building this up inside his head so long.  But Malia doesn’t force the conversation.  She lets him relax, lets him talk himself in circles trying to explain the plots of novels he only barely finished on late night mountain dew and adderall binge reads.  

Stiles doesn’t say what he planned to.  He thinks maybe that’s a good thing, after all.  It gives them time to grow back into each other, to be more comfortable.  It doesn’t force the point while they’re just making up.

She gives him a kiss before he says goodnight, though, and it takes his breath away, leaves the words on the tip of his tongue.

Stiles lets them pass.  They can come another day.

After all, Stiles knows now that they have time.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).


End file.
